Conventional video and graphic presentation systems used for weather have several limitations with respect to their ability to accurately visualize weather information. First, data representations are typically scientific in nature, displaying weather conditions in a symbolic manner. While this is useful to meteorologists, it does not give the broader viewing audience a visual representation of what they might expect to see should they look out the window at a particular time in the future.
Second, while computer graphics systems and techniques have been applied towards rendering realistic and visually compelling renditions of atmospheric conditions, they have been limited by the need for the user or creator of said systems and visualizations to provide a large amount of input to the system in terms of defining the positions, states and motion of weather events in order to generate a realistic visualization.
Third, weather systems typically present historical weather information separately from the display of forecast weather information. In general, the display of historical information is the result of display information from weather sensors (radars, weather reporting stations, satellites), while the display of forecast information is based on the output of computer-based atmospheric models. This discontinuity makes it difficult for the viewer to get a sense of how the weather is changing over time.
Thus, in view of the foregoing, there is a need for systems and methods that overcome the limitations and drawbacks of the prior art. In particular, there is a need for a system that provides automatically generated visualizations of weather over time, seamlessly blended from the past to the future. The present invention provides such a solution.